Kurosawa's adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot relocates the story to Hokkaido and is Kurosawa's first film of epic length. As an adaptation, The Idiot feels like a novel in film form. Blocks of text are used as exposition, and the film is filled with monologues of experiences and events, and letters read aloud. The setup is initially complicated, with so many characters with so many varied relationships. This is a drama of marriage, in the classical Western way, the Dostoevsky, Austen, Alcott way, not the Japanese way which we may more associate with the films of Ozu. So The Idiot stands apart, and it is a thoughtful piece, filled with beautiful shots of the snowy north, and real profundity on…

“Dostoyevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good man. It may seem ironic, choosing a young idiot as his hero. But in this world, goodness and idiocy are often equated. This story tells of the destruction of a pure soul by a faithless world.”

Ah, Kurosawa. Happy birthday buddy. His humanist philosophy is evident through most of his films, but nowhere moreso than in his adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. This plays a lot like a religious film, with Kameda, its protagonist coming off as a sacred figure. Except there is no religion behind his actions, no promise of heaven or threat of hell; just an overall affection and understanding for humanity in all its warped stages; a disarming honesty that…

Specking of Dostoevsky, Akira Kurosawa was obsessed with the man.

He planned on adapting Dostoevsky's The Idiot as some sort of magnum opus, a sprawling epic that covered ever nook and cranny of the novel in a dazzling cinematic presentation.

Unfortunately for Kurosawa, the odds were against him. His first cut was at a whooping 4-hrs long. The first screening was a disaster, and the studio that financed the film, Shochiku, commanded Kurosawa to edit the film down to a reasonable runtime. No open-discussion, no debate.

As a result, the final product is a patchy work, filled with Kurosawa's signature style of geometric compositions and some memorable performances from Setsuko Hara and the one and only Toshiro Mifune. Furthermore, by…

The story of a pure-hearted, Christ-like fool living in a corrupted, unChrist-like world, struggling in vain to heal the crowd of sick around him, ridiculed and misunderstood by those who care only for money and social status, makes for one of Dostoevsky's most puzzling, philosophical entries. 

Yet I think I prefer reading Dostoevsky than watching Dostoevsky. His stories are expressive, long-winded, and overwrought with knotted, tangled relationships. You almost need a flow-chart just to keep track of all the names, roles and how everyone relates to everyone else. When you have time to pause and ruminate and soak in each sentence, each paragraph, the text has a way of coming alive in ways that, to the contrary, feel rushed when…

Une bizarre d'adaptation, qui n'aurait pas plus marché, je crois, même si ça n'avait pas été charcuté par les producteurs. À la limite, ces coupures visibles qui donnent à la première heure du film un côté inachevé, hoquetant, ressemble beaucoup plus au roman que tout le reste, tant c'est un roman fourmillant caractérisé par des décisions brusques, des apparitions inopinées, des aparté par-dessus aparté, etc. Je comprends la décision de se concentrer sur la trame principale, il n'y a pas vraiment d'autre moyen d'adapter cela, mais la richesse du personnage de l'idiot se mesure aussi à la diversité des individualités qu'il rencontre, alors en ne conservant que le mélo on perd beaucoup (surtout que ça ne doit pas constituer plus…

Catching Up with Kurosawa Mini Project

"The destruction of a pure soul by a faithless world"

The tragedy of a good person in a bad world

I'm not particularly familiar with Dostoevsky's novel—I began reading it on my phone back in the early 2010's when I was working a dead-end job standing at a liquor store cash register for eight hours a day, but I gave it up before making much progress in order to spend that phone-time looking for a new job instead—but The Internet assures me that the book was an attempt to challenge the ideal of true Christian love in the crucible of Russian society.

In this sense, it makes perfect material for Kurosawa, Japan's great cinematic…

“Filmed as a two-part production running 265 minutes. Shochiku (the studio) told Akira Kurosawa that the film had to be cut in half, because it was too long; he told them, "In that case, better cut it lengthwise." The film was released truncated at 166 minutes.”
- IMDB Trivia section.

As a person who rarely reading a novels that considered by most of people as the most celebrated and spotless novels ever written, and whereas I missed so many novels out there, I still didn‘t missed that much, where Cinema was and still giving me/the viewer frequently the feeling that feels like I reading a book through films and Art; and it might be creating such a prettier look/feeling towards…

Akira non delude mai, anche se magari riesce a fare qualcosa in tono minore. Il regista qui sviscera il tema del doppio in modo angosciante, delineandone la figura al di fuori sia del tempo che dello spazio e esaltandone la psicologia individuale. L'uomo, come già visto anche in Rashomon, è destinato all'infelicità, agli inferi, al contrasto interiore perenne. Un tributo, quello di Kurosawa, sacrale nei confronti dell'opera letteraria di Dostoevskij, da cui con dovizia riprende tutti i particolari che hanno reso celebre l'opera originale, sebbene il cambio di location influenzi un po' la non perfetta riuscita dell'opera. Registicamente, il giapponese riesce sempre e comunque a regalare incredibili emozioni tramite scorci paesaggistici che diventano metafora perfetta dello stato interiore dei protagonisti,…

This is simply amazing. Even this severely cut version (the only surviving version) is a marvel to watch and admire. I have been a fan of Dostoevsky since reading his books 30 or so years ago and this may be one of my favorite adaptations (some decades ago I did catch a lavish Russian TV series production that was almost word for word from the book, but I don't recall which Dostoevsky novel it adapted). Some of Kurosawa's greatest movies are inspired by Russian literature and he even went on to make a movie in USSR. In some ways, Kurosawa was spiritually Slavic.

This finally brings me to this movie. I could express my admiration for the superb acting. Or…

Une bizarre d'adaptation, qui n'aurait pas plus marché, je crois, même si ça n'avait pas été charcuté par les producteurs. À la limite, ces coupures visibles qui donnent à la première heure du film un côté inachevé, hoquetant, ressemble beaucoup plus au roman que tout le reste, tant c'est un roman fourmillant caractérisé par des décisions brusques, des apparitions inopinées, des aparté par-dessus aparté, etc. Je comprends la décision de se concentrer sur la trame principale, il n'y a pas vraiment d'autre moyen d'adapter cela, mais la richesse du personnage de l'idiot se mesure aussi à la diversité des individualités qu'il rencontre, alors en ne conservant que le mélo on perd beaucoup (surtout que ça ne doit pas constituer plus…